The Stars and Bars are a symbol of Southern pride and heritage! It’s a way of honoring our ancestors, and our unique cultural identity! There’s nothing racist about being proud of your roots.

I have a three point response:

Fuck You
When I see someone sporting the Battle Flag of the Confederacy,* which was never even the actual flag of the C.S.A., my reaction is split between a dumbfounded “Really?” and a seething rage. The ignorance involved in claiming there is anything dignified or honorable signified by the South during the Civil war is just astounding. The Civil War, like all wars, was fought for many reasons, but at the end of the day, one side was defending the right of human beings to own other human beings and the weight of that one stance is so great as to render all other aspects irrelevant. Your side was in favor of slavery, therefor your side was the bad guys. QED.

The Confederate Flag is a Symbol of Racism and Failure, That’s It There’s this notion put forward that the Confederate flag isn’t necessarily a symbol of the C.S.A., but of rebellion and Southern Pride. First, no, it’s a symbol of the C.S.A. If you want to come up with a flag to symbolize the south, that’s great, but you really shouldn’t draw on the imagery of a bunch of racists who lost a war. Second, the idea that the flag is a symbol of rebellion or pride are insane. Rebellion against what? A college degree? Making more than minimum wage? Integration? If you want to be a rebel, fly an anarchist flag, not the flag or an organized government that existed just long enough to be in one war and lose. Remember that last part, the only thing the C.S.A. ever did was lose a war.

No, Seriously, Fuck You. There’s this growing notion that these days the people who REALLY have it hard are lower-middle class white folk from the south, and that they must join together under a banner in order to protect their heritage. Sorry guys. If, as a people, you have failed to keep your schools funded, your teenage daughters un-pregnant, and your parents from becoming alcoholics, and you’ve proven unable to reverse the trend, then yes, you’re going to die out. Ignorance, insularity, hostility toward change and The Other, these aren’t traits of a culture who’s loss is to be mourned. It’s not a tragedy, it’s progress.

*NOT the Stars and Bars, which is a different shitty flag the south used. They had like nine different shitty flags in the five years they even existed because the C.S.A. was fucking stupid.

Are you, like me, far too obsessed with the subtextual elements of most slurs? From the obvious (fag) to the less obvious (bitch) to the kind of unclear (dickweed) most slurs attempt to lump the slurred individual in with some other group, and it is an assumed malignancy of this group that lends the slur its heft.

With this in mind, I submit the following substitution.

Juggalo.

Juggalos are a self selecting group of people who actually are awful. No one is born a Juggalo. Juggalos aren’t just like you and me. They’re terrible. Screw those guys.

A few weeks ago, Tara initiated a conversation about the whole concept of Pussy Whipping. Her confusion stemmed from the following proposition:

A Pussy Whipped man is understood to be a man acting against his own interests, under duress. The source of the duress is a promise of intercourse only under the condition that he perform within the strictures established by a potential partner for the aforementioned sexual congress. Of course, the only way a guy is going to go out of his way to secure intimacy with a specific partner is if a level of scarcity has been established, vis á vis poontang.

Tara’s concern here is “who are the women who hate sex enough that they will constantly withhold it to create a carrot-on-a-stick scenario?” While I think we can agree that these women likely exist, it is my assertion that they are not the source for Pussy Whipping existing as a concept. If anything, some women are probably influenced to behave in this fashion because of the ubiquity of this notion. I would assert, instead that the premise behind Pussy Whipping is not manipulative behavior, but instead average, every day (if particularly severe) misogyny.

Here’s the construction for Pussy Whipping as I believe it exists:

In any relationship between a male and female, the male should hold all power.

Any male actor with agency will, at all times, act in a manner solely motivated by self interest and pleasure.

Any male actor acting in another fashion is clearly doing so as a result of coercion.

If the male actor is acting in the interest of the female, she must be the source of the coercion.

Since the male holds all other power, the female is clearly exercising the only possible method of usurping power: she is denying the male access to her sexually.

It’s super harsh, but really, it’s the only thing that makes sense. When a guy decides to see a movie with a girl instead of going to a bar with friends, and he’s accusing of being Pussy Whipped, those are the underlying assumptions. He’s not accused of liking the girl more, of hating bars, or even of being manipulated by the girl in some other fashion, the default assumption is that she’s told him either they see Eat, Pray, Love or he won’t be allowed near her vagina. I blame Aristophanes. That guy was a dick.

Editor’s Note: This is just a piece of non-narrative fiction I felt like writing. I’m not angry or yelling or anything. If that’s what you’re looking for… um… here: “We live in a society where exclusivity, that is, the quality of being likely to deny free and equal access, is considered a positive and a sign of cache. It’s sick.”

Ok, now the story.

There is only one song in Heaven, and we listen to it all the time. It’s either very long, or else it plays over and over again. Everyone loves the song the same amount, which is completely. When the song has words, everyone knows the words, and we never mess up the lyrics or sing out of key.

Some people, people who aren’t in Heaven, might think that only hearing one song, even if it is the best song, hearing only one song might get kind of old. What they don’t understand is that no matter how many times you hear the song, it always feels new and familiar, old and groundbreaking.

The mood of the song is always right for the mood in Heaven, because the only way we ever feel is fantastic. If we still cried, we would cry every time we heard the song, because it’s just so beautiful.

Everyone can play the song, and everyone does. Everyone plays it differently, and it’s always perfect.

We want to tell you what the song sounds like, but it’s very hard to do. Part of it is how you feel when you are six, and you are opening a Christmas present that you are almost sure is just what you want, but you can’t see past the paper yet. It feels like that.

Or lying in bed, being held, and it’s cold outside, and warm under the covers, and just as you fall asleep your whole body tingles and you have never been more calm. It also feels like that too.

Sometimes it feels like falling.

Some of it reminds you of some of your favorite songs, but most of the notes are notes we didn’t know about before we were in Heaven. We didn’t know things could sound like this.

I’m a big arguer, I like finding a way to express my opinion effectively, backed up with facts, while responding nimbly and intelligently to criticism and counter arguments. When someone offers me a piece of evidence or solid logic I hadn’t previously considered, I try to pause, incorporate it, and if I’m wrong, admit it and move forward. I’ve had to learn, however, that a lot of people don’t argue this way. They don’t argue in any real sense. They just state their opinions, attack your opinions, and either ignore or attempt to invalidate facts and logic that run counter to their preconceived notion.

That’s the kind if person who just wants to restate over and over how they feel about a subject, they just want to gesture emphatically at the baggage they walked in with. They don’t want to debate, they just want to declare.

Short version: There are two ways of approaching an argument, a person either wants to be right going into it, or right coming out of it. If they want to be right going into it, they’re not arguing in good faith, they’re just defending a position. If they want to be right coming out of it, they’re willing to modify their stance, meet in the middle, or even change their view completely.Read the best portable mig welder reviews on the offcial website.

Don’t talk to the first kind of arguer like the second kind, or you will go insane.

Universal Health Care would be a disaster! It would be too expensive, there’s no way a country could pay for that and keep a healthy economy! Giving people things for free just makes them lazy! What if I have to wait longer in line and… you know what? I can’t fucking do this.

Fuck it. I can’t pretend this debate is a debate anymore. There is not now, nor has there ever been a meaningful counter argument. We can afford it, we can make it good, we have a responsibility to do so. Debating the anti-health care contingent with facts, figures and logic is like marshaling an army to defend your base, only to realize your opponent is just one in a jeep making explosion sounds with his mouth. The only things keeping people from embracing a universal health care system are fear and greed. Fuck those people.

I’m going to go ahead and get all anthropology* on you. Health Care, such as we are capable of, has always, historically, been free and available to all people to the best of our abilities. Sure, maybe the best health care available was trephining someone, but it was there. In the 20th century, medical care has followed the same arc as a great many social services (law and judiciary, wealth distribution, education) and becomes a role of the church and religious structures, then moves into the public sphere, eventually coming under the control of the state. At least, it has in pretty much every country other than the US.

Homo Sapiens take care of each other. It’s how we’ve survived; it’s what we DO. If, as a human being, you are told you have the option to make sure no one has to die of a treatable disease and you don’t go for it, you’re a piece of shit. If you’re told we can totally eliminate the number one cause of bankruptcy (which is really bad for the economy), by not taking every last dollar a sick person’s family has, and you aren’t on board, you’re a piece of shit. There’s no debate to this. If you’re worried you have to wait for care, the answer isn’t about overall levels of health care, and making as many people as healthy as possible by getting the right healthcare products for each disease such as joint flx to strengthen joint tissue. If you think it’s socialism, it’s not important that health care is a service, not a means of production, and thus doesn’t really relate to socialism, it’s important that you know you’re a piece of shit. If you don’t think people should get freebies, it’s not that you’ve lived such a sheltered and blessed life that you’ve never developed the empathy to understand and relate to people in trouble, it’s just that you’re a piece of shit.

I don’t have enough energy left to waste it giving real answers to people are motivated by greed and fear. Stand up straight, join the human race, do the right thing by helping your fellow man, or fuck yourself. Those are the options. If you can honestly say that keeping a profit motivated system is, in any meaningful way, better than a system motivated by a desire to make people healthy, there is something wrong with you. You’re sick. You might want to look into moving to one of the many, many countries where you can get some help with that.